Dichotomy Consulting

When I arrived at my job at TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York, the fact that I was a bilingual writer had preceded me.

“Would you listen to the Hispanic radio spots we just recorded for Chivas Regal?” they asked.  “Sure, I’d be happy to,” I replied.

I was handed a cassette–yes, it was that long ago–and I made my way back to my cubicle to sit down to get an earful. And, boy, did I.

What I heard was a single radio spot, but read by three different voice talents. One stereotypically Mexican, the other just as “central casting” Puerto Rican and the third labeled as “Cuban” though it was no more than what is known in Hispanic broadcasting parlance as el acento neutro, “the neutral accent.”

What in the name of all that is holy was this?

My first agency job was in the South Korean office of Ogilvy & Mather. There I was brought up on the Ogilvy “Brand Stewardship” model and a central tenet of that model was that a brand has a voice. Literally and figuratively. Why did Chivas have–in the same market–not one, but three voices?

Recording different Spanish accents for this spot made as much sense as recording “general market” Chivas spots with regional accents for different sections of the U.S. Would the voice of Chivas have a “twang” in the South? Of course not.

Fast forward to today and my work in social media. In my opinion, brands need to have a consistent voice online; a voice that belongs to the brand, and not to some appointed–and perhaps temporary–emissary.

Nowhere is this more important than on Twitter. The best brands in this space engage their followers personally, one-on-one. This requires an individual personality. If this role is assigned to someone who tweets under their real name, there is a risk that the network that individual builds will go with them when the time inevitably comes for that person to move on. The “Founder & CEO” can be an exception to this; Tony Hsieh, Founder & CEO of Zappos.com is one notable example.

In most cases though, a brand’s Twitter identities need to be brand properties that can exist in perpetuity with different individuals playing the part over time or even in shifts. McDonald’s didn’t lose Ronald when Willard Scott moved on to greener pastures, did it?

Like many creative executions with marketing purposes, branded Twitter identities should follow a creative brief not unlike the ones art directors and copywriters work from. A brief of this type should outline how the identity manifests itself–is it a “talking logo” a la @starbucks, or a character like Old Navy’s @supermodelquin? What should the tone and manner be? What sort of followers should it actively be seeking? What should the scope of its interaction be? And so on. Like any communication project, a Twitter identity should have a goal, and a plan to achieve it.

I will expand on this in a future post as I delve further into the concept. This is some pretty fertile ground and I’m sure it will lead to 1:00 AM expresso brewing when I can’t get it out of my head.

*The author of this post was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on October 22nd, 1968.